La Coiffure

In 1907 the loudest noise in Paris painting came from a single unfinished canvas in Picasso's studio, the one that became the Demoiselles d'Avignon, all hard angles and mask-like faces. Matisse took a quieter road that year. He returned to one of the most domestic of subjects, a woman having her hair dressed by another, a scene French painters had loved for generations. He keeps the tenderness of that tradition but flattens it into a few warm planes of colour, the standing woman's arms curving around her seated companion's head. Where an older painter would have blurred everything in soft light, Matisse lets the shapes stand plainly, filled in with orange and rose and green.